Round or Elongated? How to Buy an Electric Bidet Seat That Actually Fits (Simenr Round, LEIVI B01, Delta Refresh 893005E-WH)

The bidet is roughly three hundred years old and got its name from a horse. It appeared in French bedrooms in the early 1700s as a low standalone basin on legs that you straddled, and somebody with a sense of humor called it a bidet — the French word for a pony — because of the posture. It spread across Europe, through Latin America, across Japan and the Middle East, and became completely ordinary in most of the world. It never landed in the United States, and the reason has less to do with squeamishness than with square footage.

By the time indoor plumbing went into American homes at scale, the bathroom had been standardized into a small rectangle with three fixtures crammed along the walls. There was simply nowhere to put a fourth basin. That constraint held for the better part of a century, and it is the one that modern electric bidet seats finally got around: instead of a new fixture, you replace the seat you already have. No floor space, no plumber, no demolition. Two bolts and a water line.

A 1903 plumbing catalog's idea of a modern bathroom — the compact American layout that left no room for a fourth fixture (photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Step one: round or elongated, and how to actually tell

This is where most bidet seat purchases go wrong, because people guess. Do not guess. Take a tape measure into the bathroom and measure your bowl, not your current seat.

• Measure from the center of the two seat mounting bolts, straight forward to the outer front edge of the bowl rim. Roughly 16 to 16.5 inches means a round bowl. Roughly 18 to 18.5 inches means an elongated bowl. There is no in-between size, and the two are not interchangeable.
• Measure the bolt spread — center to center between the two mounting holes. On virtually all standard North American toilets this is 5.5 inches, which is what nearly every seat is built to.
• Measure the widest point of the bowl. Most bowls run about 14 to 15 inches, but a compact or a European fixture can be narrower.
• Check what is behind the toilet. An electric seat needs a few inches of clearance at the rear for the housing and the water inlet, which is a problem if the tank sits tight against a back wall or the toilet is jammed into a corner.

The outlet problem, which almost nobody plans for

An electric bidet seat heats water and runs a dryer, so it needs a real power source: a grounded, GFCI-protected outlet within reach of its cord. A great many American bathrooms, particularly anything built before the 1990s, have exactly one outlet and it is above the vanity on the far wall. Running an extension cord across a wet bathroom floor to a heated appliance is not an acceptable answer. Check this before you buy the seat, not after — adding a GFCI receptacle near the toilet is usually a modest electrician visit, but it needs to be part of the plan.

The plumbing side is genuinely simple by comparison. These seats tee into the existing toilet fill line with a supply adapter, so it is a shutoff, a flexible line and a small T-valve. No new drain, no new supply run.

The three electric seats in stock

Round bowls. The Simenr electric bidet toilet seat, round, $149.99 is the only round-bowl electric seat currently on the shelf, and round-bowl options are always scarcer than elongated. It is 18.9 inches long by 15 inches wide, with a heated seat, warm water wash, warm air dryer, self-cleaning nozzle, adjustable water pressure and sprayer position, an LED night light, and soft-close hinges. Open box.

Elongated bowls. The LEIVI B01 electric bidet seat, elongated, $139.99 covers the same feature set — heated seat, warm water, warm air dryer, self-cleaning, adjustable pressure, LED light — and ships with its fittings included, which is the detail that matters on installation day. There are two of these in stock, so it is also the option if you are doing two bathrooms at once.

The brand-name discount, with one caveat. The Delta Refresh 893005E-WH elongated electric bidet seat in white, $134.99 is a Delta unit at open-box pricing. Read this part carefully: this one is listed without its mounting plate. If you already have a compatible plate, or you are willing to source that one piece separately, it is the cheapest way into a name-brand seat here. If you want to unbox it and bolt it on the same afternoon, buy one of the other two instead. We would rather say that plainly than have it arrive as a surprise.

If you do not want electricity in the bathroom at all

Not every upgrade needs a circuit. If the real complaint is a cheap, rattling, yellowing seat rather than the absence of a wash function, a good seat is a genuine quality-of-life improvement for a fraction of the price. The Duravit 0063320000 Starck 3 elongated toilet seat and cover in white, $120.99 is a German-made closed-front seat, new, approved for commercial use, 18.5 inches long and 14.125 inches wide with the standard 5.5-inch hinge spread and mounting hardware included. It is built to a standard that has essentially nothing in common with a big-box seat.

Whichever direction you go, do the measuring first. A round seat on an elongated bowl leaves two inches of exposed porcelain at the front and nothing will make it look right.